Why it is False that Miracles give us faith and
faith complements reason.

If something highly odd happens then it is rational to ask why it happens if it
really has happened.

Religion says that miracles give us faith and faith complements reason. The two
are allegedly in harmony.

REFUTATION: Miracles draw people away from reason. If we didn’t have reason we
wouldn’t be alive and it is the most important faculty we have. To insult reason
is to insult people and take the side of misanthropism and put belief before
people. Miracle reports try to encourage hatred.

A miracle cannot be understood. You cannot explain how it is done. If your bath
is leaking you know the cause is a hole. But if you say the leak is a miracle
you are saying there is no explanation. Yes there might be one but there might
as well not be one for you will never learn how miracles happen.

A miracle cannot be made intelligible so to use miracles as explanations
ultimately explains nothing. It is like saying that water + hole = leak is wrong
and now it is water – hole = leak which is against mathematics and
intelligibility. No decent God would do obvious miracles for we can only
perceive them as nonsense we believe in. If he had to do them he would have to
do them in secret unknown to anybody to spare us. He is doing them not for glory
but for obfuscation and to place us in the depths of mystery and paradox.
Miracles would be sick jokes. They would be calls to pretend they explain when
they explain nothing. They are calls to self-deception and all the evil it
brings. If miracles happen then the Zen Koan, “What is the Buddha?”, can really
be answered by, “10 pounds of Flax”. Buddha could have been turned into flax
while still looking like a person just like Catholics have the bread and wine of
communion turning into Jesus literally without changing the way they look.

Why use the term miracle to distinguish the event from magic? There is no
difference. When a witch turns water into blood it is magic. When God does it,
it is not magic but miracle. The Church says magic is impossible for it breaks
the laws of nature and then it turns around and proclaims magical events such as
miracles to be true! What sense does it make? Miracle believers say they don’t
believe in magic. They say they don’t believe in magic and then they believe in
it and call it something different. They condemn those who don’t believe in
miracles and accuse them of prejudice while they do what is no better
themselves. They condemn belief in magic while believing in it themselves. If
miracles encourage religion, that nastiness is what they are encouraging.

What is so damn great about any particular religious faith that a god has to do
miracles to promote it? Humanists get fulfilment by faith too. They have faith
in their cautious optimism and their belief that death is no worse than falling
asleep. It is scandalous to teach that miracles promote the true faith even if
nobody in that faith is good or holy. Miracles should be promoting the best
humanitarian aid instead. Clearly the message is that belief comes before good
works. Miracles that promote religious belief or a particular religion, if they
happen, are abhorrent. If a miracle happens, it is better to let somebody die
through lack of funds to save their life to spend the money on authenticating
the miracle. The miracle fans accentuate the underlying lack of charity that
ripples beneath the surface of the religion that reports them.